That would show them

That would show them. She’d find herself in Seattle or some other big city, actually maybe New York, on some nice summer day, and she’d be sitting in a cafe looking pretty and put together and probably tan, wearing a summer dress that fit her really well. Just form-hugging enough, but not too much, like, not in a slutty way but almost. And she’d be successful. That was the important thing. And she’d greet them with such confidence and warmth, and she wouldn’t be weird at all.

Or, here was another one: she’d be doing a reading of her work—the kind, yes, that she’d never actually done before, and they would have come because they saw her name on a poster, and in the crowded room afterward she’d greet all the people who’d come to see her read, and they’d wait in the back. And then they’d saunter up, and it’d be all, “Oh, it’s been so long,” and “Oh, care for a drink and catch up?” And of course she’d graciously accept—because even though they were secretly groveling, even though this had everything to do with her recent incredible success, they’d both pretend it didn’t. In this scenario she knew exactly what she’d be wearing, too—a knit sweater with a collared shirt underneath, elegant high-waisted slacks, and some sort of classy, maybe pointy leather shoes. A real New York intellectual kind of look. And she’d be—well, sort of demure, but self-assured, like, she knew her work was good, no one really needed to tell her.

So that meant that apparently she actually had to do the work. Instead of…all this. That was the kicker, wasn’t it? The terrifying thing was that she could spend hours at it. Sometimes the daydreams tugged at her so hard she couldn’t concentrate. She got stuck talking to people her head, accepting thanks, giving that great keynote speech, listening to people tell her how her work had changed them—and there they would be, handsome as ever, waiting in the back. Even though—god, they were so annoying, even here, in her own fantasy, even here they were so damn poised—even though they were only here for her fame, because they valued social prestige, they didn’t make it seem like that, did they? They approached her like, Ah, it’s so lovely to see an old friend. Ah, you know, you cross my mind all the time and I always meant to pick up the phone but I just never quite made it there, you know how it is, things get in the way and time slips away from you, but then I saw the poster for your talk and I knew it had just fallen into my lap and I had to come. Wow, they said, as if just realizing it: You look great.

You look great too, she’d say. Of course, in the fantasy she really had her life together and had started working out regularly, not at all related to the possibility of seeing them, even though she knew what city they were in now; they didn’t have much in the way of social media and what they did have they didn’t update often, but she checked every once in a while. Just to know. But of course, in the fantasy, she’d really been too busy for all that. She’d gotten over it, really!

She’d gotten over her fantasies, in the fantasy.

Sometimes she stood in the shower for over an hour, stuck in it. She would scratch at the grout with her fingernail and smile to herself, and in her head she was smiling out at the crowd and nodding pleasantly, and everyone just liked her so damn much. And she didn’t have to prove anything to anyone because it was already very obvious how talented she was—how those long years of practice and careful study had paid off, and now she could just sail along, creating great works of art every year or so, ones that people would wait on the edges of their seats for.

She worried that maybe they’d have gone bald by now, or maybe they had a beer belly— even though that was ridiculous, they were only some five years out of school. People didn’t go that fast, did they? It was important that they still had their looks, but that now she measured up to them, she’d come into her own.

They were probably doing some sort of small business thing, successful and satisfied in their own right—she’d never want them to be, you know, destitute or anything. That wouldn’t be right. They had to be respectable. But naturally they’d be really impressed with where she’d gotten herself.

Wow, they’d say, you’ve been busy! And she’d say, Yes, well, you know. We haven’t seen each other in five years. Six years, seven years—the number adjusted itself, because she had to give herself a couple years to realistically get her career to that point, and two years was far enough away that she didn’t need to think about it too much.

She’d say, I’m really a very different person now—you know, people change. I’m sure you’ve changed. And they’d say, Yes, I suppose I have. And they’d smile thoughtfully and look her in the eyes in that intimate way they had, and she’d know that they had in fact changed. Changed for the better—because they could really see her now. Could see that she would have been worth staying in touch with. Would have been worth sticking around for.

She tried not to go the other route of fantasy—the nightmarish one, where she ran into them in some coffeeshop right in town, and she was just where she was now. What are you up to? They’d ask, and they seemed, like, happy enough to see her, but not elated, more like, oh, fancy seeing you here. Because in this scenario she was exactly as she was—and she couldn’t lie, she’d have to tell them that she was living at home with her parents and working on her writing, and no, she hadn’t published anything, and yes, she was still working on the same novel, yes, the one about the gay vampires—and yes, she was turning twenty-eight soon and she still got acne sometimes and sometimes she stared in the mirror at her wrinkles, which were somehow a lot more prominent in this version of events. In the ideal versions she probably moisturized regularly and maybe even had a dermatologist, because she could afford it herself. Maybe she even wore sunscreen. That had always seemed like something put-together people did.

It just seemed really unfair that she was getting older and still waiting for her life to begin, and they, in her imagination, always looked the same. If she could see them in real life and measure the effect of the years, maybe that would help. Or, I mean, maybe it would just be terrifying, she thought. Maybe I’m better off not knowing. Maybe I’m better off with the fantasy.

Sometimes there was another fantasy—one that was by parts disappointing and also, maybe, just a little bit freeing—and that was when she imagined the reading, the speech, the meetup with fans, where they didn’t show up at all. That version frightened her. She wasn’t sure if the whole fantasy felt hollow because of it. She wasn’t sure if she liked it. She supposed, it made her question whether the whole ordeal of becoming known to the world was worthwhile, if it didn’t mean becoming known to that person. So that worried her, and she didn’t like to linger on that particular vision.

Sometimes, on the very best days, she didn’t have any fantasies about herself at all. On those days, she sat down and opened her laptop and started writing.